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New York Times pushes clemency for Edward Snowden. Justified? (+video)

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The case for some sort of clemency for Edward Snowden also involves a judgment on the National Security Agency's activities. If NSA phone metadata collections are held to be unconstitutional, the chance of a deal might rise.

Should the United States government offer NSA leaker Edward Snowden some degree of clemency so he does not have to spend the rest of his life in exile, forever looking over his shoulder?

Washington Editor

Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.

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Yes," says The New York Times editorial board, in perhaps the most high-profile defense yet of the famous fugitive.On Jan. 1, the Times published an editorial that argues that the information revealed by Mr. Snowden has had enormous value and launched a nationwide debate on government surveillance.

Snowden couldnt just go to his superiors and work through channels to reveal NSA abuses, claims the Times, because legal protections for whistle-blower activities dont apply to government contractors such as him. Meanwhile, theres no proof his leaks have actually damaged US security, according to the papers editorial board.

When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government, writes the Times.

The British paper The Guardian has published an editorial with a similar point. This New Years push for mercy is likely to drive official Washingtons arguments over Snowden and his legacy, already heated, to new levels.

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New York Times pushes clemency for Edward Snowden. Justified? (+video)

Orwellian or a Blunt Tool?: Conflicting Rulings on NSA Spying Set Up Likely Supreme Court Showdown – Video

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Orwellian or a Blunt Tool?: Conflicting Rulings on NSA Spying Set Up Likely Supreme Court Showdown
http://www.democracynow.org - A federal judge has upheld the National Security Agency #39;s bulk collection of U.S. telephone data just days after a separate cou...

By: democracynow

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Orwellian or a Blunt Tool?: Conflicting Rulings on NSA Spying Set Up Likely Supreme Court Showdown - Video

NSA Spying: Rand Paul Plans Obama Lawsuit

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A Republican Senator says he will take legal action against President Obama for "snooping on the American people," following revelations from Edward Snowden of unlawful spying by the NSA.

Rand Paul is urging anyone in the US with a mobile phone to join the group action which declares the government is not permitted to access the public's emails and phone records without a warrant.

Mr Paul said the purpose of the action is to "protect the Fourth Amendment," the part of the US Constitution which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures.

"The question here is whether or not, constitutionally, you can have a single warrant apply to millions of people," he told Fox News.

"So we thought, what better way to illustrate the point than having hundreds of thousands of Americans sign-up for a class-action suit."

Mr Paul's move comes as a secretive US intelligence court decided the NSA can continue to collect phone data from American citizens for at least another 90 days.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) renewed the NSA surveillance programme on Friday, despite a panel of advisors advising the President Obama that a warrant must be obtained for each search.

US government lawyers have also moved to block a surprise decision by a district judge that ruled the NSA phone records programme was unlawful.

Judge Richard Leon said the NSA's programme was "almost Orwellian," a reference to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984.

He added there was little evidence the operation had prevented terrorist attacks, a conclusion also reached by the advisory panel to President Obama.

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NSA Spying: Rand Paul Plans Obama Lawsuit

Businesses Deny Helping NSA Plant Bugs in Americans’ Gadgets

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NSA spying could wreak havoc on the national economy, cost the IT space $35-45 billion, creating a digital recession

The stuff of dystopian science fiction has become the reality that Americans are living in. Newly published documents reveal the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is engaging in behavior that many Constitutional experts condemn as criminal.

I. No One is Safe From Those Who Claim to Protect Our Safety

To the NSA every American is a potential criminal. So it uses techniques it borrowed from cybercriminals against every American.

Every American is a target. Your data is mined. It is "temporarily" stored for 15 years. If you type a suspicious query in search engines or social networks, the NSA's autonomous attack system, targets you for deep attacks. These deep attacks reportedly literally watch tens of thousands, if not millions of Americans via compromised webcams.

The NSA has admitted to violating the law "accidentally" thousands of times a year, but refuses to allow outside parties to inspect its behavior. It won't even given special Congressional committees the full story on its tactics. Agents have spied on former lovers. And documents show the last two Presidents have spied on political rivals (including Quakers and Occupy Wall Street activists).

But the NSA documents reveal in Germany this week show there's more.

II. Complicit or Victims? Either Way the Sabotage Threatens to Create an American IT Industry Recession

Jacob Appelbaum, a University of Washington (UW) security research remarked in a weekend keynote:

This part of a constant theme of sabotaging and undermining American companies and American ingenuity. As an American, while generally not a nationalist I find this disgusting, especially as someone that writes free software and would like my tax dollars spent on improving these things. And when they know about them I don't want them to keep it a secret because all of us are vulnerable. It's a really scary thing.

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Businesses Deny Helping NSA Plant Bugs in Americans' Gadgets


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